From Sitges to the Oscars

The statuettes for Guillermo del Toro with the film that opened the Festival’s fiftieth anniversary edition rocket the director to the very top

It was the best culmination of the Sitges Festival’s fiftieth anniversary edition: Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water, which opened last year’s Festival, reached the very top and obtained the Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director after already picking up a handful of other awards and prizes over the last few months.

Guillermo del Toro was the big winner at the Hollywood Academy’s gala. Obtaining four statuettes for the movie that opened the fiftieth anniversary edition of the Sitges Festival is the maximum acknowledgement for a film that has collected an increasingly larger headcount of awards. The Shape of Water is the picture of the year.

Guillermo del Toro in person went up to accept the Oscars with a clearly delighted face, familiar as he always is –and has shown it on every occasion he’s been in Sitges–, ingenious, lucid and grateful. His fable of love for a monster has conquered the Academy, just as it did all of Sitges’ viewers. With last night’s awards, the man who was the ambassador of last year’s Festival –the most special of all, to date– earned a place on his own merits among the greatest in universal cinematography.

The Oscars for The Shape of Water (in addition to Best Picture and Best Director, it also won Best Original Score Production Design) have made its list of prizes vast: Golden Globes (Best Director and Best Original Score), BAFTAs (Best Direction and Best Original Music), Critics Choice Awards (Best Director), Director Guild of America Awards, Satellite Awards (Best Art Direction and Production Design), Golden Lion…

Guillermo del Toro landed at the Sitges Festival for the first time in 1993, where he presented his debut feature, Cronos, winning the Award for Best Screenplay. In 2006 he opened the Festival with Pan’s Labyrinth.

The Oscar gala had other moments with a strong Sitges tone, like the onstage appearance made by Christopher Walken (winner of two Oscars, in 1979 and 2003, and receiving the Grand Honorary Award at Sitges 2016) when he presented the award for Best Original Score, precisely for The Shape of Water. Anothername from Sitges, Sam Rockwell (who was here in 2009 to present Moon), picked up the award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.